Jo Ratcliffe

JO RATCLIFFE

represented by ® Biography

studios might employ a designer, an illustrator, work for the music industry meanwhile includes a scriptwriter or storyboarder and a director Sony’s advertising campaign of early 2000’s, to create an animation, Ratcliffe is unusual the annual posters for the South by Southwest in fulfilling every one of these roles whilst festival, and in 2010, the cover design and tour maintaining a fashion sensibility. Her films imagery for Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream album. are unique in their ability to bridge the brand aspirations of a luxury client with the technical Over the past three years, the shift towards digital expertise of a digital animator. and motion imagery in fashion has positioned Ratcliffe at the centre of the most exciting Born in Berkshire, England, Ratcliffe studied innovations in global media. Currently based in painting and printmaking at Saint Martin’s London, she has been working on a burgeoning College of Art and Design, London. There she portfolio of animations and digital projects for developed a facility for incorporating illustration fashion’s most prestigious houses. Following a into graphics through poster design. Her early film collaboration with Inez & Vinoodh and Kate editorial work for Dazed & Confused in the early Moss for Balmain in 2011, Ratcliffe was chosen 2000s was marked for its hand-drawn aesthetic, to direct the ident announcing the re-launch of JO RATCLIFFE which stood in contrast to that of many of the LVMH house of Kenzo; part of a print and her peers, and their over-reliance on the new animation package reflecting the company’s One of a new generation of creatives who are Photoshop and Illustrator tools of the period. younger positioning. “Kenzonique’s” colourful redefining the look and function of fashion Commissions for fashion publications such as montage, featuring Ratcliffe’s signature “walking imagery today, the director and illustrator Jo Visionaire, V and Vogue Nippon followed, and woman” motif, captured the imagination of the Ratcliffe leads in the field of multi-dimensional particularly for UK Vogue, to which she remains a advertising community and earned the short’s media. Her immaculate, instantly-recognisable regular contributor. These helped Ratcliffe build inclusion in the Business of Fashion’s Top Ten graphic style adapts to myriad outcomes – not up strong relationships with photographers such Fashion Films of the Season. only can she execute meticulous portraits, as Inez & Vinoodh and Richard Kern, and also led collaborate on photo-stories, create props to projects for a range of commercial clients The trailer’s success has led to further work for or stage spectacular installations, Ratcliffe in the industry, including Levi’s, Edun, Uniqlo, LVMH – most recently, “New Now”, a Noirish also devises album concepts for pop stars, Stussy, Topshop, Möet Chandon and H&M. This animé centred on the belts from Louis Vuitton’s invents characters for animators and dreams up work can be extremely diverse in form. In 2010, S/S ’12 menswear collection. logotypes to rebrand fashion companies. Ratcliffe designed various identities for Morgans Hotel Group, as well as icons for its iPad App, Biography by Penny Martin The breadth of this 10-year portfolio has made while in 2011 she was commissioned to make her incredibly self-sufficient when it comes an illustrated tear-up-and-keep tablecloth for to directing motion imagery. Whereas most a private dinner staged by Louis Vuitton. Her Miller Harris Fragrance illustrations & packaging Michael Kors Valentine’s Day 2016 Gift Guide http://en.vogue.fr/fashion-videos/fashion-story/videos/love-story-michael-kors-plays-cupid/21797 Sephora Holiday 2014 Fresh: Rose Face Mask 15th Anniversary Special Edition Packaging http://www.fresh.com/UK/Fresh-Moments-Jo-Ratcliffe.html Tory Burch Tory A Film by Jo Ratcliffe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CH5g7bnrsUo Nike Made Light to Go Long: Flyknit Lunar 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwrilctDpOg Yahoo! Style Horoscopes Vogue UK December 2012, “Vogue Goes Pop” Cole Haan Jen Brill x Olivia Kim Collection http://vimeo.com/65221879 Pennyblack Fall/Winter 2013 Magalog Illustrations KENZO Kenzonique Spring/Summer 2012 http://vimeo.com/65237719 Katy Perry Album art for “Teenage Dream” & “The One That Got Away” Topshop Window Displays during London Fashion Week Louis Vuitton Table & Menu Illustrations Jimmy Choo PF15 Capsule Collection with Artist Rafael Mantesso https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrkXs9kBVec Rob Pruitt x Jimmy Choo Devil Panda, Angel Panda http://vimeo.com/65216012 Vogue US Fashion film opening + ending credits, “Jonnie & Ari” http://vimeo.com/65314191 Flamingo Nightclub, Berlin Neon Signage Chrome Hearts x Vogue Japan August 2014 CR Fashion Book Issue 4, “Fairy Tales” See by Chloé Spring/Summer 2014 http://vimeo.com/65216011 Ever Manifesto Ever Bamboo Character Work Dita von Teese

Letter Works Hair Alphabet SXSW Norway at SXSW, 2009-2013 Louis Vuitton The Belts of Spring/Summer 2012 http://vimeo.com/40640746 Morgans Hotel Group Identities and iPad icons Balmain Nowness, featuring Kate Moss http://vimeo.com/66252166 V Magazine Art direction & collage Nina Ricci Fall/Winter 2012 http://vimeo.com/66248970 V Magazine May 2013, “About Face” Lady Gaga Applause https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pco91kroVgQ Four Tell x SHOWstudio A collection of animation http://vimeo.com/63644743 Isetan x Vogue Japan Fall/Winter 2012 Louis Vuitton Women’s Spring-Summer 2013 fashion show, collaboration with Saskia Lawaks Visionaire #59 Fairytale, photographs by Inez & Vinoodh Fantastic illustrator Jo Ratcliffe gets set to go, photographed by Paul Wetherell, styled by Hannes Hetta.

The portfolio of super-successful fashion illustrator Jo Ratcliffe is T-shirt - do you remember that Japanese streetwear label?” an exuberant affair. Her work for magazines including V Magazine Though they never called, last year Jo designed textiles for and Vogue Nippon and fashion houses like Kenzo and Jimmy Choo Nina Ricci and created animations for Louis Vuitton.” can combine exquisitely hand-drawn explosions of 60’s-style flowers in jewel colours with luscious candy-striped backgrounds. The “I spend all day sitting at a desk in my studio in east London, extenuated line-drawn women in her animations stride past fantasy drawing with my left hand and doing screen work with the cityscapes and flashes of neon. right,” says Jo, “so it’s important to wear something functional” Though jewellery is a luxury she enjoys, Jo tends to lose it: The Gentlewoman “When I started at Central Saint Martins in 1996, my clothing was “My life is full of single earrings.” driven by music,” she says. “The Pixies, the Breeders, the Violent SPRING/SUMMER 2013 Femmes - it was skaterish, I suppose. I was studying fine art, but my CAROLINE ROUX ultimate goal was to have one of my designs on a Hysteric Glamour Crane.tv

INTERVIEW BY PAUL RAPPAPORT http://www.crane.tv/jo-ratcliffe

Art director, illustrator, and animator Jo Ratcliffe challenges tradition, setting fashion in motion with her multi-dimensional skills.

online content moving image and it’s kind of a blank canvas. I wouldn’t do as I was told as a child. I spent most of my time drawing, with my left hand, and would draw everything the wrong way around. So if I was I’m really emotional about the things that I make. I get really stressed out and worked up if things handwriting I would handwrite in the opposite way to everybody else and all don’t start to look the way that I want them to - and animation has brought the biggest learning the words would be backwards. Images actually were the right way around. curve. The Balmain one was probably the one I can remember the most because I just knew noth- So it started. ing about animation. I remember sitting outside a shop in a car some of the time, I was just looking through these emails and I had 4 weeks. I knew nothing about it. I knew it would be with Inez and I was living with the art director of a magazine and I just thought of doing Vinoodh and Kate Moss so I knew if I made a mistake, it was going to be very public. But it was kind some drawing and giving out little bits and pieces to put in the magazine. It of a crash course in education. was a way of making art work and getting it published that was really low cost. There is nothing like being able to make your drawings come alive. It’s not just about that. It is about being able to give life from so many angles to this image. You need to decide what’s happening, to When I started out, I saw other people making illustrations and having a par- design sound, to tell the story. For me, I quite like things to be quite funny, not too serious, to inject ticular style and it just seemed to me, especially in fashion, it would age very something with a sense of humor and you get a great amount of satisfaction if it works. So I mean quickly and I didn’t want to find myself falling into that hole. I want to stay it’s a lot of fun but there are times when I long to just be sitting here on my own making drawings. current and I want to keep evolving. At the moment, there is a lot of call for SUPER NASTY

OUT THERE — ISSUE No. 02 JESSICA HOLLAND

Conjuring The World: Get Pulled into Jo Ratcliffe’s Elegant Atmosphere.

Illustration by Jo Ratcliffe Photo by Ben Toms

When you interview someone, you’re not supposed to interrupt every five minutes Since then, she’s worked with some of the most famous names in fashion and pop. Remember the shimmering, with “ME TOO! YES! I FEEL THE EXACT SAME WAY!” but Jo Ratcliffe—a fashion illustra- neon-glowing cover for Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream”? That was Jo, and her Twitter account got a boost last tor who looks like a hybrid of model and rock star in black clothing and multi-colored summer when the pop star tweeted in caps-lock about how “INCREDIBLE” she is. Now, Jo says with a smile, “I’ve sneakers, with pixie-ish features including long, pale-pink hair—makes it impossible to got a lot of followers who like One Direction.” resist. She’s soft-spoken and petite, and when I switch on a voice recorder at her Dalston studio she says she feels awkward being taped. But as soon as she For that project, Jo drew inspiration from the “trippy” Alice in Wonderland cartoon movie and the hyperreal starts talking about the things she’s passionate about, like the way art can conjure up photos of David LaChappelle, but her style mutates with each new piece of work. On a windowsill in her studio intense feelings and whole imaginative worlds, she lights up, and I start enthusiastically there’s a witchy record cover she drew for a metal band; nearby are gorgeous collages of models and flowers chipping in about my writing ambitions as though we’re friends from way back. that she made for a Nina Ricci ad campaign. She’s turned Lily Cole into a wild, mythological creature for the cover of Dazed, added animated creepy-crawlies to a video of Kate Moss for the French fashion house Balmain, It’s almost two hours later that the tape runs out, but by then she’s on a roll, and and painted a dead mouse into the mouth of Sofia Coppola for the ultra-exclusive magazine Visionaire. (You can I scribble notes on scraps of paper as she tells me about the way it feels cycling buy the issue online for a mere $195.) More recently, she came up with a strange, funny video for Jimmy Choo along an abandoned railway line at twilight in the mist, with no one else around. She called “Angel Panda, Devil Panda,” a kind of mash-up of fashion promo, 1980s video game, and surreal Japanese says her favorite way of clearing her mind after a deadline is wandering around a gigan- cartoon. tic shopping mall to soak up the “euphoric” atmosphere. “It sounds bizarre,” she says of the mall fixation. “I’m slightly obsessed.” It’s a portfolio as vibrant and contradictory as the artist herself, but what ties it all together is Jo’s swooping, elegant drawing style and her tendency to subvert prettiness with a dash of something unsettling. It makes As a kid from a working-class family, Jo would draw constantly, and ended up going sense that she’d “kill to work on a Tim Burton movie,” and that she’s a huge fan of the graphic novelist Chris to the iconic Camden art school Central Saint Martins. She never imagined she could Ware, who mixes crisp, beautiful art with pitch-black humor. She’d like to follow them, one day, into a more make a living from her talent, until a flatmate, then art director at Dazed & Confused, narrative art form. “I’m interested in creating characters at the moment,” she says. “I’d really love to make art persuaded her to add some illustrations to a fashion spread. She took out a loan to that touches people emotionally, to tell a story. Hopefully that’s what all this will get me to.” buy a computer, taught herself Photoshop and Illustrator, got offered more magazine work, and was snapped up by an agency. Vogue UK

NOVEMBER 29, 2012 | AIMEE FARRELL http://www.vogue.co.uk/news/2012/11/29/jo-ratcliffe- illustrator-interview---vogue-december-pop-issue

For the pop-themed December issue, Vogue commissioned illustrator Jo Ratcliffe to create a set of fun, graphic fonts to bring the magazine’s pages to vivid life. Here, Ratcliffe reveals the playful inspirations and pop masters behind her cartoon-like creations:

What does pop mean to you? Bright, light, colourful, frivolous and anything goes.

Where do you begin on a commission like this? I look through my scrapbook of images and do a little research. That’s generally just to get my mind on the right track for each project. I try not to look back too much or I’ll end up stuck.

What was the pop look you wanted to capture for Vogue’s December edition? Something modern which gave a nod to the pop art of the Sixties, mixed with references mainly from Japan.

What were your pop references for the Vogue project? I was looking at Manga, emoticons, toys, Pokemon and then artists like Yayoi Kusama and Takashi Murakami.

Which graphic creation was your favourite seeing the finished magazine? I think Grimes. I like the mix of the two styles and it’s not serious stuff, so it sits well over the shot of her cheeky smile.

Who is your ultimate pop idol? PRINCE! PRINCE! PRINCE! He was the first and second concert I ever saw. Computer Arts

OCTOBER 09, 2007

“I have eureka moments in the middle of the First breaks night.” admits Jo Ratcliffe. From illustrating Sindy It was this position that led to her first real art job: for Marvel Comics to drawing real-life supermod- drawing the comic book adventures of Sindy for Marvel els and designing for leading fashion labels, this Comics, one of Hasbro’s many licensed properties. Was artist’s career isn’t short of breakthroughs! that something she ever expected to be doing? “No not at all! Although I loved Sindy as a kid, much more than “I don’t really like creating illustration with a nar- Barbie for some reason! rative,” says Jo Ratcliffe. “I like iconic images. I’m interested in design, and typographic illustration Although this may not have been a traditional route into allows me to include drawings of women - or the industry, Ratcliffe was now on her way, gradually whatever I want - without needing to describe or making inroads into the illustration business. “I was living say something.” with an art director, who asked me to create some illustrations for a magazine she was working on, then I was Ratcliffe’s typographic work is but one part of asked by another art director to create some illustrations a burgeoning career that has so far taken in pure and I started to put a portfolio together,” she explains. illustration, editorial work, fashion shoots, album “Then, about a year later, after seeing agencies and covers and more. Perhaps best known is her work companies with my book, I was phoned by an agent who for the likes of Dazed & Confused, Nylon, Vogue took me on. I think I was very fortunate.” and Wallpaper, all of which showcase her adept- ness for glam subjects - in contrast to the purely These days her style is hard to pin down; it appears she illustrative, generally darker pieces that she cre- can turn her hand to just about any form of illustration. continues to excel. “I’ve drawn so many faces now that my ability to draw ates for music artists. But, as they say, you ain’t From clean, lean magazine spreads to curling typographic has increased tenfold. seen nothing yet. experiments and photomontages, it’s difficult to define the Jo Ratcliffe ‘look’. It’s not a deliberate strategy, she Self-taught Although Ratcliffe has always loved drawing, and says, but it works to her advantage. Coming from a background of working with traditional media, she later found it easy even as a child, she says it never taught herself Photoshop and Illustrator - still her tools of choice. She ap- really occurred to her to consider it as a full-time “I don’t want to be pigeonholed - or haven’t wanted to proaches each job completely differently and with fresh eyes, which may job. “The career grew organically rather than from be yet - so it would go against the attitude towards my explain some of the visual versatility: no two jobs ever look the same. a childhood determination to do what I do now... work to try to characterise it. I suppose I’m somewhere I didn’t really think it was something many people between a designer’s illustrator and an illustrator’s il- “There are so many things I experiment with,” she explains. “I couldn’t tell managed to make a career out of.” lustrator. However, now that I’ve been illustrating for you that I have any specific method. I can be inspired by anything from a a few years, I feel like settling down with a particular photograph to something I’ve seen at a gallery. Most of the time, if I keep After “much persuasion” by her art teacher and style!” Early influences included Raymond Pettibon (“Not my head buried in my work, I have eureka moments in the middle of the her parents, she went to Central Saint Martins that you’d ever know that!”), Gustav Doré and Arthur night and make a note of those ideas.” College of Art and Design to study fine art, Rackham, but now, she says, “I’m not sure I have a design specialising in printmaking - the traditional way. hero.” As always, being receptive to new ideas has to be juggled with deadlines. While successful at the course, there was no “If you can vary your approach then you will vary the result, but there plumb job to step into immediately, and Ratcliffe Whatever style she adopts in the future, it’s likely to isn’t always time to experiment. In fact, there’s rarely time. I gather quite a soon found herself working as “a bored reception- be influenced by both portraiture and typography, two lot of reference material, which I’m still not sure I would advise, as it could ist” at toy company Hasbro. areas that Ratcliffe has grown to love - and in which she just distract you for longer.” NOWNESS

JANUARY 6, 2011 http://www.nowness.com/day/2011/1/6/1245/jo-ratcliffe-dream-weaver

The Artist Gets Inside Kate Moss’s Head for Inez and Vinoodh’s New Film

For their surveillance-styled film Everglade, photographers Inez and Vi- noodh were intent on portraying the inner workings of Kate Moss’s psyche. The pair turned to British illustrator Jo Ratcliffe to accomplish the task. Ratcliffe’s career arc has taken her from drawing “Sindy” for Marvel Comics to creating images for publications such as Visionaire and Vogue, as well as fashion brands including Dolce & Gabbana and Marc Jacobs. NOWNESS talked to Ratcliffe to about animating a fashion icon’s thoughts.

How does one inhabit Kate Moss’s mind? I guess there was no specific brief. Obviously she was working and being shot, and the more I looked at the film, the more I thought she looked like she was not settling, so I put something unsettling in there.

Where does the world you created for Everglade come from? There are things engrained in my head: Disney; artists like Arthur Rackham; a British cartoon called Willo the Wisp; Sleepy Hollow—Tim Burton stuff.

You’ve worked with Inez and Vinoodh in the past, notably on a project for Visionaire entitled Fairy Tale, in which you doctored the photographers’ portraits of celebrities, in one case drawing a rat between Sofia Cop- pola’s teeth. I’m not sure [the Coppola picture] was meant to be published, but that was my favorite one.

How did both collaborations come to be? Inez first contacted me a year ago, and we did Visionaire before the animation came about. I’ve been a fan of Inez and Vinoodh’s from the beginning. I just thought that what they produced was sexy and unique and glam- orous and natural at the same time. So when they contacted me it just seemed like a really genuine partnership from the start. I was trying to get across in my work some of the things they get across in their work, and I didn’t think I’d done it yet—but there must have been something that Inez had seen.

So is this the beginning of the next chapter for you—the moving image? Oh yeah, absolutely. It’s a real joy. I’m working on some characters at the moment and I’m talking about making them into a kind of animated series. But I think that would be more pop than what is going on here. This is dark and expressive. I’ve worked in still images and design where there is plenty of room for expression, but not half as much as when you start moving these things around—giving them sound and voices and some kind of personality. I wish I could spend the rest of the year doing it. TATLER Front Row

APRIL 2013 ISSUE LUCIANA BELLINI

Here’s Looking At... Jo Ratcliffe

“I’m not girlie,” Jo Ratcliffe informs our photographer through ever-so- slightly gritted teeth, The fashion illustrator’s drawings have jazzed up ad campaigns for the likes of Louis Vuitton and Balmain - she stuck a bunch of cartoon balloons in Poppy Delevingne’s hand for the former, and sketched a sexy, slithery snake around Kate Moss for the latter - yet the 35-year- old still has a bit of trouble getting her won image across. She has a nose tinier than a baby’s thumb and long blonde hair that would put a Disney princess to shame, so you can see where someone might get the wrong idea, but Jo’s a confirmed tomboy: “You won’t find me in a dress unless I’ve got a reason.” Luckily, we managed to wrestle her into one.

But it’s all about practical clothes when she’s scrambling around catwalk shows, sketching models. Last month, she was resident illustrator on The D a i ly , the London Fashion Week magazine. Pretty good for someone who snuck into the world’s most impenertrable industry via the reception desk.

“When I was younger, I just took jobs on reception at magazines - and then the art directors would hear that the receptionist could draw...” So now she’s in , is it all fashion soirées and air-kissing till dawn? Not so much. Jo likes her eggs serious-side-up. “The parties can be fun, but I get worn out. And if I go to a drinks thing with my friends, I don’t talk to anyone else.” She’d rather be listening to Women’s Hour or learning to tap-dance. But she does admit that one part of her is definitevly high-fashion: those eyebrows.

They look like she nicked them off Cara Delevingne. “I struggled with them all through the Nineties and then one day a friend of mine said, “Oh my god, look at your eyebrows - when did you get them?” They’ve been on my face all this time. Just stand still and fashion will come to you.” Lost at E Minor Style File Blog Portable.TV

MAY 3, 2013 APRIL 29, 2013 JENNA HAWKINS DAWN SCHUCK KATHARINE K. ZARRELLA http://portable.tv/fashion/post/oh-kenzo-so-unique/ http://www.lostateminor.com/2013/05/03/devil-panda-got-your-jimmy-choos/ http://www.style.com/stylefile/2013/04/cole-haan-x-jen-olis-electro-metropolis/ Directed by Jo Ratcliffe, Kenzonique is a less-than-a-minute- So this is what happens when big brands hire artists for new long adventure into the many collaborative minds that campaigns: devil pandas run off with lovely shoes. Naughty The latest Cole Haan x Jen & Oli collection hits stores have made the label so timeless despite the eccentricities panda. This Jimmy Choo commissioned short animation is tomorrow (it’s also available online now), and in order to it exhales into the mainstream. The animation by Rob Ward directed and illustrated by Jo Ratcliffe, in collaboration with showcase their new spring wares, Jen Brill and Olivia Kim en- and Suzanne Deakin shows a long limbed model strutting artist Rob Pruitt. Pruitt says: ‘I think there is a certain amount listed artist Jo Ratcliffe to create a futuristic short film. Set through the streets in her Kenzo designs not distracted by of role-playing fantasy that goes into the ritual of buying to a toe-tapping electro score by artist-cum-musician-cum- the overload of colours, patterns and conflicting lines in her shoes and I wanted to play up that idea literally with the DJ Brian Degraw, the video explores a techno-pop fantasy path, a perfect metaphor for the past, present and future of Angel and Devil panda; it’s the classic good girl/bad girl land tailor-made for Brill and Kim’s playfully hued sandals the label having new live breathed into it. play’. PowerPuff style Pandas plus pretty shoes, can’t go and peep-toe platforms. As Brill puts it, the artists “created wrong. the city of [their] dreams—modern in every way, [with] eye candy for miles.” Watch the short (and listen to its catchy track) in its exclusive debut and take a peek at Jen & Oli’s new collection. Juxtapoz Magazine Lifelounge

SEPTEMBER 24, 2012 NOVEMBER 17, 2011 http://www.juxtapoz.com/current/the-work-of-jo-ratcliffe KATIE http://www.style.com/stylefile/2013/04/cole-haan-x-jen-olis-electro- ‘Jo Ratcliffe is an artist living and working in London. Rat- metropolis/ cliffe studied Fine Art at Central Saint Martins School of Art. Her commercial work has been featured on the cover of Jo Ratcliffe calls herself jocandraw, and she’s not lying. The British Vogue and internationally in publications such as The artist has been commissioned to create artwork for Vogue, New York Times, Dazed and Confused, Wallpaper, Another Stussy, Wallpaper, The New York Times, SXSW and made Magazine, Uniqlo Paper and Vogue Nippon.’ some fairyfloss pretties for Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream album cover. Ratcliffe (who’s based in New York City) paints, draws, designs and dabbles in typography too.

Evidently, there’s basically nothing Ratcliffe cannot draw – her portfolio is diverse and extensive – but according to an interview with computerarts.co.uk she can’t draw Cameron Diaz: “I’ve drawn so many faces now that my ability to draw has increased tenfold. There’s not many faces I can’t draw... Although a couple of years ago I had a lot of trouble with Cameron Diaz… Not personally, of course, but she was impossible to draw.”

Her works bounce from lazy-appearing sketches to meticulous and sharp designs, playful to polished, silly to sleek. She’s hard to pin down and we like that. Contact:

Aeli Park [email protected]

Will Shen [email protected]

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